The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
yea, Paula said what I am thinking...is this deliberate to get attention??? my A mother used t cut on herself to get attention....it got to the point where even tho i did not understand detachment, i did not respond to her doing this stuff....if she got hurt bad enough, i called the emergency......
noone should be left lying in blood or broken bones, but if this is deliberate, I would call the cops on him if it is bad enough to warrant medical attention.......coddling him in my opinion minor injuries only will encourage mhim to do it more.....
with my mother, i called the doc. and the police a few times....it was waaay over my head what she was doing.....even tho i cared not much for her, she was a life and i wasn't going to let her lie in her blood like her husband did.....
i hope you get into as many meetings as you can, find a sponsor to guide you with your step work, and slogan practice and recovery literature, and meetings as many as there are days until you are over the 3-6 month "learning period" then meets , still, but maybe not ea. day....
please give program a chance
-- Edited by neshema2 on Saturday 26th of October 2013 11:08:55 PM
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Live and let live and do it with peace and goodwill to all!!!!
Hi all, I'm new to this site and pretty new to al-anon.
My boyfriend is my qualifier, and when he drinks, he tends to injure himself, sometimes pretty severely. It's never been to the point of having to go to the emergency room (at least not since I have known him) but enough that he is visibly in a lot of pain. The last time this happened, he fractured his foot and I helped him wrap it up and made him comfortable on the couch. Is this an enabling behavior? Should I just stay away when he injures himself, and if so, how? We live together and I don't really have another place to stay the night. If my help is an enabling behavior, how do I refuse to help him without making the situation escalate (when he's intoxicated he takes offense at the smallest perceived insult, so I'm pretty sure if I told him I wasn't going to help him he'd lose it)? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.
Hi... one thing we learn in Alanon is d e t a c h m e n t... and the serenity prayer, of course. I don't think we should enable the drinking- but if someone is hurt and injured that is something different.
I am still learning about detachment. The best teachers are those who have it. You will find some of them here! Welcome, and best wishes,
My son used to hit himself with a hammer on is legs. He at one point was so black and blue that I was concerned about him really hurting something inside. I don't think it was enabling him to try and get him to quit or help him when he was in so much pain. He said it would make him feel better. I even took him to the doctor once but it didn't stop. I finally had to just let it go. When he would complain so much I would just say stop the hitting and the pain will go away. I said it many many times but I wouldn't try and stop it anymore. He finally stop on his own.....don't know why....maybe it was his way of getting attention. When I stopped giving the attention he stopped.
Welcome again and keep coming back because you are not alone. We are here to support and give the much needed ESH.
Take care of you my friend...
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Alcoholism is a progressive fatal disease that can be arrested but never cured. We who love an alcoholic and attempt to understand and fix or "enable" need a program of recovery for ourselves. Alanon is that program The reason we need this program is that we are powerless over the disease We did not cause it cannot control it or cure it. It is difficult to see someone suffer and not act. If someone is injured I have called 911 so that the appropriate e help is available.
I urge you to search out alanon face to face meetings in your community and attend. Here you will learn new constructive ways to live and interact with the world including the alcoholic
I also needed to learn the difference between helping and enabling and I spent alot of time in the rooms listening to the ESH from others especially the old timers and then my sponsorship to come up with what works for me which is. "If she has the time, ability and facility to take care of her needs and I step in and take over...that's enabling. If she lacks any one of those three (time, ability or facility) -and- I ask her if she needs help first...that is being helping. This is just for me. I am no longer married to an alcoholic/addict and today that doesn't matter. ((((hugs))))
It's like attention seeking behaviour. Very manipulative in my experience. It should stop if you try to ignore it. Responding is the reason for it. Maybe you could phone an ambulance next time rather than get involved yourself.x
Watching someone self-harm is fearful and distressing and the actions of someone who is very sick in mind,, body and spirit. I quickly learned I wasn't qualified to cope with this insanity (without going insane myself) and always called the emergency services. In Alanon we learn we didn't cause it,, we can't control it and we can't cure it.
You are fearful of your bf blowing off if he perceives you doing something other than what suits him.......that must be a scary place to be......
It's important to take care of you.
Alanon meetings will help you lots......hope you decide to attend, you will find lots of experience strength and hope from those who walk in the same shoes.
I agree with the previous posts that if he is intentionally self-harming, he needs professional help. My daughter's dad (3rd ex-husband, I have 4 that I've married who had issues due to alcoholism, this one in particular was NOT an alcoholic, but the adult child of an alcoholic father who had sexually abused him as a child) used to intentionally self-harm. I do not believe that it was as simple as some have stated here that it is a attempt "to get attention". I have had counselor's tell me that self-harm can be for 3 reasons. One: to distract themselves from the internal emotional pain. This causes an 'outside' pain that is greater than the inside pain, which distracts them from the original pain. Two: they want to punish themselves in some way for what they view that they have done that is 'wrong'. In the case of my ex-husband, he blamed himself for his A father's sexual abuse. Three: to keep themselves from 'striking out' at another person (loved one) whom they fear they will harm.
In all situation that involve alcoholism: We did not Cause it, We can not Control it and we Can not Cure it. We have to do what's best for us, as cruel as that sometimes sounds. In the case of my ex-husband, I called 911 numerous times, had him hospitalized and turned him over to God. We did 5 years of counseling to no avail, he got better, but not enough that I trusted him to be around our daughter. We divorced in 2004, and he has been on supervised visitation ever since.
We love our LO's but we can't fix them... but first and foremost we have to protect ourselves and our own safety.
Overcome
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I can Overcome all things through my HP who strengthens me.
Thank you all for sharing your experiences and advice, I really appreciate it. He's not deliberately harming himself, he just seems to think he's invincible when he's intoxicated. I have been attending face to face meetings, but I haven't quite found one that feels like "home" yet.
I have a loved one who isn't an A, but he has injured himself in serious ways since he was a kid. Maybe that was the only way he got attention? I don't know. What I do know is that I will do what I need to do if its something he can't do for himself when he hurts himself if I'm with him but I also won't make a big deal of it. I'm not his therapist, nurse, doctor and I frankly don't respect this attention getting maneuver. I do think I am enabling/assisting bad behavior if I do make a big deal about it or help him tend to his injuries if he can do it himself. Needless to say, he doesn't often hurt himself in my presence. He also seldom tells me when he's hurt himself. We talk about everything under the sun, but self-inflicted injuries are usually not the topic of our conversations. I'm truly not that interested. I know this sounds cold, but I also know that years of this repeated and misguided way of seeking attention is a problem that he has that I can't do anything about. I don't live with him now, but even if I did, I just wouldn't allow this behavior to exist with copious amounts of my attention feeding it. I'd feel deceitful because I know down deep I don't respect it.
